“Nor will the careful student ever recall Lincoln without recognizing the Gettysburg incident as condensing within itself all that he elsewhere spoke and wrote and accomplished. The meaning of what had transpired on the first three days of July, 1863, with the thousands of lives that had been sacrificed, and the tens of thousands that were enduring untold physical suffering, and the countless homes throughout the land that were darkened because they mourned loved ones, so filled his heart that he compressed the convictions of a lifetime and the anguish of the responsibilities he was then bearing, into a two minutes’ address that has become the most highly cherished classic that America has produced.
